


Loss

by mostlyvoide



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Grayson (Comics)
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-25 20:49:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3824620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mostlyvoide/pseuds/mostlyvoide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Damian deals with loss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loss

**Author's Note:**

> riceandshine|tumblr

0.1

What Damian realises is this: loss is not a searing, gut-wrenching pain that can be endured. Instead, it is a constant feeling of wrongness, like entering a room where a piece of furniture that's been there your whole life is suddenly gone. 

This is a lesson he learns while attempting to stop an apparently ingrained habit of leaving his left side exposed in battle. A lesson he learns feeding Titus his leftovers when no one steals bites off whatever food he’s eating.

Damian is prepared for agony. His metahuman abilities, his upbringing… it makes him perfectly capable of withstanding any kind of pain. What he wasn’t prepared to deal with is the empty spaces. 

He would prefer agony over this.

 

0.2

The familiarity of combat is enough to bring him relief, at first. It's familiar, a practice they've all stayed true to since before they were in each others' lives. Even Drake had done karate as a child, and the Batcave is never empty, the sound of pained grunts and flesh meeting flesh echoing in the dark spaces. It's not enough to fill the space they're desperately trying to fill, but it's the only thing they have.

If defeating Drake offers him even littler satisfaction than it usually would, then he ignores it, trying to maintain an adrenalin rush that covers up the exhaustion and emptiness that never really goes away.

He knows no other way of dealing.

0.3

It's why he's going down to the cave at some ridiculous time, hoping to find someone to spar with or a convenient inanimate object to destroy without consequence.

What he finds instead is Drake's unconscious, exhausted form sprawled on top of multiple keyboards, all connected to various dimly lit screens. 

He wants to roll his eyes, except a part of him is jealous that Drake's body has finally succumbed to the blissful darkness, where emptiness is expected and normal and  _welcome_. It's why he doesn't kick at Drake's chair to topple it over; doesn't try to rudely wake the ex-Robin. Sleep has become even more precious to all of them lately. 

He turns to walk back up the stairs, deciding that he needs to feed Titus  _right now_ , three hours earlier than he usually did - that dog needed a little more spontaneity in his life, when a weird noise from Drake stops him. It's a clack-clack-clack noise, fast-paced and continuous, and it makes Damian turn back around, walk closer to Drake.

The source of the noise makes his eyebrows rise. It's Drake's  _teeth,_ chattering. The other boy is shivering in his sleep. As a physical response, it shouldn’t shock him – like everything to do with Batman, the cave hadn’t been built with _people_ in mind, so of course it was an ice box. Usually they were too busy sparring or trying to avert a crisis to notice, but in the relative calmness of sleep...

Drake is going to wake up an icicle, he knows, unless someone takes time out of their lives to grab a blanket and drape it over his shoulders. Damian's not the kind of person who would do any such thing, and neither is Batman, lately. Alfred rarely goes down to the cave anymore. 

The only person who would take time out of their lives to make sure Drake keeps warm and doesn't catch hypothermia isn't there anymore.

It makes the feelings of rage and loss and grief that he's been trying to hold back crash over him like a wave. He had just found – he had just found a place to _belong_ , and it had been taken away from him, first through his own death and then through Grayson's – and it just wasn't  _fair._

The loss feels starker when he sees it reflected in Drake, who had lost the one person who would do something as simple yet  _kind_ like drape a blanket over his shivering body -- or maybe even drag him to bed before he collapsed from exhaustion. 

He wants to wake Drake up and punch him in the face, scream at him for shivering and making Damian feel the full extent of pain and loss he had so carefully been keeping at bay. Yet he knows it would do nothing. He’s tried violence, and it wasn’t the answer. Still, he feels that uncomfortable feeling,  like he's staring at the blank piece of wall where a painting had hung for years and years, and he wants to... he wants to at least try and cover up that space, even if he can't get that exact painting back.

So Damian moves towards a closet he had seen Grayson go through a thousand times, and picks out a warm, purple blanket. He drapes it over Drake’s hunched over body and leaves.

He imagines a blank canvas, a paintbrush dipped in paint. A mission to create something to cover up a glaring empty space.

 

0.4

The act of putting a blanket over Tim Drake has calmed the hurricane of feelings he’d been so helplessly fighting. 

The empty space is still there, but he's begun to create something that will one day fill it again, and the act of using his unsteady, inexperienced hands to try and work towards filling that space means he isn't spending quite so much time looking at it.

It works. Even better, it’s  _easy._

He doesn’t haveGrayson's emotional presence, and will probably never quite have his warmth – but putting a bowl of soup besides a Pennyworth who would have forgotten to have his meal is easy. Providing Batman and Red Robin with a towel after a rainy patrol takes no effort.

One day, after a particularly rough patrol, Drake comes down to the cave with vanilla ice cream and wordlessly hands it to Damian. 

It’s his favourite flavour, and when he scoops a spoonful into his mouth he realises it’s also his favourite brand. He hasn’t had any since Grayson's death, mostly because he was the only one who’d remembered to buy it and bring some to Damian.

He tries not to think about it, but in his mind’s eye he can see Drake sit down next to him, helping him fill the empty spaces in both of their lives.

 

0.5

Grayson is still gone from their lives.

No one comes into Damian’s room and laughs while attempting to tuck him in, and no one sits next to Titus and allows the giant dog to lick all over their face.

Still, it surprises Damian that not every space that Grayson filled is still empty, because now Drake sits and eats vanilla ice cream with him, even though all he does is complain about its plainness. Now the ever-annoying Stephanie Brown comes over and steals food off of Damian’s plate, resulting in Damian having to get an unusually larger portion to fill both of them.

And Damian realises that loss can be gained back.

**Author's Note:**

> The way that I numbered the segments of this fic actually has some significance. It's half of one, and it's sort of... me trying to convey Damian 'rebuilding' or 'filling in the spaces' in his life. It's halfway there.


End file.
